Special Lessons

Our True Self is not a person. It is a great spirit. And it is part of a ceaseless flow in which the idea of "good" and "bad" only exists because in that flow has been born a certain creature, given an imagination that has created a self in the name of itself. And there you have all of the problem. When you resist what life brings and don't accept it, all you're really doing is....

Look around you, wherever you may be and at any moment. Try to see through the roles of actors and actresses crossing this or that stage of life; look past their appearances and seeming differences and you'll find all share one thing in common: people do the things they do in order to try and provide themselves with a feeling of being complete. They sense that there is a...

Every one of us knows -- from somewhere deep in the heart of us -- we were not created to spend our lives contesting whatever dominates us in the moment. And yet, we can see how each unwanted state that washes over us is replaced by another state of some similar ilk. It's pretty clear: we're never truly in possession of ourselves, unless we believe that not wanting to be...

Love exists. She is never not present although her life-giving presence is rarely perceived, much in the same way as we breathe in air moment to moment barely noticing the gift of life it sustains. Nothing exists without Love. She is the secret Heart of all. These are not just words. They are an introduction to an Invitation created when Time began....

Can you can see that, "If I'm ever to have freedom, somehow or other I'm going to have to accept everything that's given to me"? It seems counterintuitive, so let me explain why it's true. There are two orders of transformation. They are not really separate; they are in a constant exchange, just like the river is in a constant exchange as water flows in and out at each point...

When in a fight of any kind, over anything, we look over at the other person and "see" - almost magically - exactly what's wrong with him or her in that moment. So confident are we in our conclusion as to the nature of their problem - that the following has almost no chance to dawn on us: We can't see that person is looking at us in this exact same kind of "light"... that is not a light at all...

Most of us, if we have one shred of decency, have tried to do stuff about the stuff that we don't want to know about in ourselves, and certainly that we don't want others to know -- "the dirty little secret" -- how there's a certain party or character that given the right conditions, will appear and absolutely not only corrupt you but anyone and anything that it touches. How about this?...

We don't know that we walk around with our mind literally looking at the world around us through our eyes full of darkness. And the darkness that our eyes are full of is imagination and the self that it generates. Unattended imagination relies on what it imagines in order to bring into existence a simultaneously imagined self. It is the most dangerous force in the world, because anything that...

The moment I feel resistance, the moment I feel that contraction inside of me, I must understand that I am being introduced to myself. I've been brought to the bear, to touch the bear! That anger, that rage, that impatience appears in us. You and I know we have these states in us. We can dress up and appear pretty and appear like we're in control of ourselves, but every last human being...

You may want to think about this for the rest of your life... and I'm not kidding. The need for a lesson to be learned attracts the condition it requires to be fulfilled. Do you see how benevolent is the Creator (whatever word you want to give to it)? Because look, how many of you think to yourself, "Oh joy, here comes a lightning bolt! Here comes a lesson!" No. When lessons come..."

We must learn to struggle with our "self" all the time, because without awareness of the way we meet our life, of what meets life for us when we are just "gliding" along... then, in truth, what is it that meets life? The answer is... no one... just a host of habitual thoughts, feelings, prejudicial ideas, beliefs, and mechanical reactions. If we are not aware of ourselves -- right now, and in all..."

There are these moments where a person is introduced to a great clarity that the world they have been looking in, in order to find themselves through, is incapable of revealing the worth they are looking for. This first shock (have you had it, by-the-way?) is when a person realizes, "Uh oh. This is a dead-end. Oh no." And when a person has enough of these moments..."